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FUN HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES

WATERCOLOUR PAINT: BIRDS (INYONI IN ZULU)

There’s nothing like traveling and road trips during your December holiday. My husband and I are definitely travelers by heart, discovering new places and experiences. (I will try to start sharing some of our 2017/2018 December holiday plans, places and some holiday food soon, we went to a few places that’s not known for great signal so I fell behind a bit 😉 )

Even while traveling I still like to take time to be creative, but packing your oil paint and canvas or tools for a bit of wood work is not always plausible. So I discovered how easy it is to take along watercolour paint. It’s a matter of packing a small box with the paint colours, two or three paintbrushes and a watercolour paint book. There is always a container of some sort available to mix your colours in.

I would take time during our holiday to find a beautiful scenic spot to sit at – maybe with a sunrise or sunset – and then just sit and play with the paint. I discovered the secret to really round off your painting is using a black fine line pen to accentuate the outlines. I am a big amature when it comes to watercolours, so if anyone wants to add tricks of the trade in the comment section to help the “just-doing-it-for-the-fun-but-wants-to-learn-more” people we will appreciate it 🙂

I hope you will make some “me-time” to sit and play with your watercolours, you never know if you will really surprise yourself with the end result!

As I’ve mentioned before, I have only started painting about three years ago, meaning, that most of the paintings I’ve attempted are firsts for me:) For this specific painting the fire was a definite first!! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but photographing sunsets, sunrises and fires are not the easiest thing to do. You never seem to really catch the beauty of it on camera. Well painting it, I can tell you, is even more of a challenge (well for me in any case). A good friend of mine helped me to start off and well, this is the end result… As I know myself I will probably try to adjust it up and till it’s delivered to my very first customer, who was the photographer of the photo I painted this from. This photo was taken at their favourite campsite. I guess they wanted a reminder of their happy place even though they’re not there.

What is your happy place? I can’t really narrow mine down to one place or thing but I would definitely say mine is somewhere in nature. I love sitting alone in God’s Creation, it makes me feel closer to Him. I get the almost tangible feeling when the wind blows around me that I can experience the presence of God. The Bible says in Kings 19:12 that God was not in the earth quake or the fire, He whispered in the stillness of the wind..I really don’t hope anyone will have a request for me to paint the wind somewhere though:)

I hope you all will have an amazingly blessed day and have the opportunity to also visit your happy place soon for a nice relaxing time!

God bless

J

xxxx

(PS. This painting was also difficult photographing, since the whole picture changes a bit depending on the angle you’re looking at it and the type of lighting its getting.)

Personally I have always enjoyed creating anything beautiful using any medium…BUT…I always got so frustrated because the picture in my head just didn’t look anything like the physical end result! Then in 2014 I started painting classes at Beate Naudé in Richardsbay. These social painting evenings were the highlight of my week! Beate is an amazing art teacher who guided me into actually painting something I was proud of…and no I’m not claiming Picasso end results!! So I thought I’d share a few of my first paintings with you.